The Ghosts of Deep Time

This is the big secret: time travel is easy, and people live throughout all of deep time's eras. Of course they live without a trace, for that is the law of deep time. To do otherwise could create paradoxes, bifurcating histories, even time wars and mass extinctions.

Where there is law, there is crime. When crimes span millions of years, law enforcement takes a special kind of officer. More

A consultant finds a fossilized pack in the desert, then finds himself back in the Miocene with a criminal gang.

A game warden busts a group of trespassing druids in a wildlife sanctuary. They vanish in a green flash and he loses his job, only to be recruited for something much bigger.

This is the big secret: time travel is easy. There are over four billion years in Earth's past. The deeper one goes in time, the more alien the Earth is. Still, people have settled most of Earth's history. Of course they live without a trace, for that is the law of deep time. To do otherwise could create paradoxes, bifurcating histories, even time wars and mass extinctions.

Where there is law, there is also crime. When crimes span millions of years, law enforcement takes a special kind of officer. An ex-game warden can be the perfect recruit. At the right time.

Frank Landis is a professional botanist and ecologist working in California.

He is interested in putting the life back into science fiction and fantasy, and he likes looking at how humans relate to the natural world, how sustainable societies work, and writing, and (primarily) writing fun stories for people to enjoy. He also writes non-fiction, primarily botanical essays such as the ones posted on his blog.